


The Girl with the Golden Brain

by shirogiku



Category: Original Work
Genre: 18th Century, Angst and Humor, Classical References, F/F, Fairy Tale Retellings, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Multi, POV Female Character, Pirates, Polyamory, Women Being Awesome, Women Loving Women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 09:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6748351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirogiku/pseuds/shirogiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of Alphonse Daudet's <i>Man With the Golden Brain</i>, now with pirates and women loving women.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl with the Golden Brain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shaitanah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaitanah/gifts).



> The [original fairy tale](http://www.byanyothernerd.com/2014/05/short-story-131-man-with-golden-brain.html).

Once, there was a girl with a golden brain; no, children, that is not just an expression - her brain really _was_ made of pure gold, without any exaggeration. She was born in a townhouse in London, and her parents were rich enough to afford a whole army of doctors, not that any of them had a clue why her head was so heavy. They all agreed that she did not have long to live and was barely worth naming. As is the way with such infants, she was fed and provided for, while her family went on with their business, waiting for a healthy child. No, don’t look at me like that, it happens everywhere in the world.

That sad prediction might have been fulfilled if not for the girl’s faithful nurse. The old woman looked kindly upon her and raised her as if her own daughter. The girl developed a strong neck and broad shoulders, as well as a great capacity for cheerfulness. For you see, the fact that her brain was made of pure gold in the most literal sense did not mean that it couldn’t be pure gold in every other.

After her came a boy, and their parents doted on him so much that she was left to do as she pleased, what with her nurse not having the heart to say no to her in anything. She read difficult books - oh, yes, some of you do like that - and climbed trees and played with stray dogs, pigs, and street urchins.

As soon as her brother, who was only one year her younger, noticed the difference, he expressed the wish to join the girl in her daring enterprises. At first, she shunned him: where he went, so did his caretakers. But then his eagerness won over, and a friendship was forged.

When she was about ten, and he nine, her dared her to climb a particularly steep roof. What neither of them had taken into account - and in _England_ , no less! - was that it had rained heavily the night before. The tiles were slippery, and worse than that, as loose as milk teeth.

The brother cried in horror, certain that the girl had fallen to her death! Her lifeless body was immediately surrounded by the servants, with her nurse weeping disconsolately. The others nodded to themselves as if in satisfaction at the grim prophecies finally coming true. Some people are like that, you know, and they don’t even always mean to be cruel.

Just as the father and mother showed up, suddenly, the girl opened her eyes and sat up, rubbing her forehead in confusion. Her hand came away with a smear of liquid brilliance, and that was how they all found out about her golden brain.

* * *

Ha, happy, say you? Oh, yes, they were positively _ecstatic_. From then on, everything changed for the girl. No more games were to be played outside, and there was another medical concilium in her room, the doctors trying very hard not to agree on the exact colour of the sky. She was sent away to the countryside, where she was allowed _one_ daily walk around the grounds, but that was all. And still, the family’s paranoia grew.

‘But who on earth would steal me?’ she wondered. ‘There is no one here but the birds and foxes, and the old stable-lad, who, by the way, isn’t a lad at all. I swear, he is at least ninety!’

‘Bad people’ was the answer, unchanging and repeated as often as ten times a day. Having grown sick of hearing it, she searched for those bad people in the library. With time, she made herself into quite an expert on them.

What was that? She could run away? Well, yes, but her brother visited her every now and then, and her nurse was with her until dying of old age. She read a great deal, but what the books told her did not seem that much nicer than her present circumstances, and where would she go? Her parents were kind enough not to send her to a convent, was her reasoning. The prospect, however remote, filled her with unformed trepidation.

It wasn’t until her eighteenth birthday that her seclusion was at an end. Her parents told her that the time had come for her to marry a suitable young man of their choosing, without all that wearisome business of balls and introductions - dancing must be so very hard for her! But before that, one small matter had to be resolved - the matter of her dowry.

As the girl drank her tea without a shadow of suspicion crossing her mind, the family physician quietly entered the room. For the past eight years, he had been studying the inner workings of a human brain. That was a lie: mostly, he had been squandering her parents’ money. The results were conclusive and convincing: a person, especially a married woman, required but a quarter of her brain to function, and the extraction would be swift and would not hurt a bit. Wouldn’t she rather put all that treasure to use, instead of letting it sit there and weigh her down, barring her from all enjoyment of life?

This _is_ something of a horror story, isn’t it? Right, not to describe her flight in unnecessary detail, but hot tea was flung in the physician’s face, and then she headbutted him like a goat would. She really could use her head, couldn’t she?

The stable-lad was napping peacefully; it was her brother who helped her saddle up the horse.

‘Come with me, brother!’ she implored him. ‘Mama and Papa have gone mad!’

But he only smiled at her ruefully. ‘Forgive me, sister. I may not be as mad as they are _now_ , but I cannot answer for myself if you and I travel together penniless.’ He urged her to leave while she still could.

And so, she was alone and truly without a friend in the world; her family cared more about opening her skull than about her future. She wasn’t greedy, and she could stand to lighten the load - but not at the risk to her mental faculties. Like I said, she _had_ been reading a lot of difficult books.

‘I suppose I should be glad they haven’t chopped off my head in my sleep!’ she told herself with a laugh. ‘Oh, there I go, talking to myself. A sure sign that I have finally been driven to adventure.’

Her first quest was simple: to get as far away from her family as possible, and then maybe, just maybe, discover what had made her the way she was.

* * *

One story that had any similarity with hers came from the realm of the classic. It had been translated by a circle of most remarkable city gentlemen, and it occurred to her that she might seek their counsel. They would not even employ her as a maid. She sold her horse and found herself at a loss as to what to do next.

In the story, Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and all that was mad and merry, had misplaced his old schoolmaster. Silenus had a habit of being misplaced. That time, he turned up in King Midas’s palace, enjoying his stay immensely. Such generous hospitality must be rewarded in kind, declared Dionysus - with one wish, any wish at all. And what do you suppose the silly man asked for? That whatever he touched should be transformed into gold. Ha! He must have forgotten that a gift like that should be subject to one’s will, or it would become worse than a curse.

‘Why didn’t he seek another god’s favour?’ the girl wondered. The tragic resolution of the myth frustrated her beyond measure. ‘There used to be so many of them! And why couldn’t he have phrased his wish better?’

Days and weeks went by without her situation improving any. She heard whispers on the streets, of modern lotus-eaters. A certain kind of poppy flower could bring her relief like she had never known. Was she tempted? Of course she was. But deep down, she did not want to be rid of her golden brain - she only wanted to know what to do with it.

When nothing more could be accomplished without revealing her secret to anybody - and she guarded it as jealously as her family had ever done - she decided to go abroad. The New World had legends of men and entire cities made of gold. Perhaps some of them were true and some of their wise men had survived. And they would definitely kill her on sight, she reminded herself sternly. Even so, one foggy morning, she boarded a ship, having spent all her savings on the passage.

You can guess how that went: her ship was attacked by pirates - though perhaps their captain might come as a surprise. Golden-Palms was a formidable woman; gold dust clung to her palms, quite literally. The quartermaster was called Silver-Tongue, and the bosun Bronze-Feet - so light they were, quick in a dance and yet quicker aloft.

The one thing that the pirates lacked was a golden brain, so despite her apprehension, the girl made up her mind: if she could not sail safely on a merchantman, why not sail with the sea rovers? So long as she revealed her secret to none. Pirate hunters would be the first to deliver her back to England and her parents.

So she put a question to Silver-Tongue: ‘If I win against you or your Captain in a game of chess, will you employ me as your strategy advisor?’

At that, the two pirates burst out laughing, with the entire crew soon joining them. The girl was used to many things, but being laughed at was not among them. When their boisterous amusement abated somewhat, the quartermaster asked her sternly:

‘Who are you to call yourself a strategy advisor, English girl? Have you ever read the works of Sun Tzu?’

She had not even _heard_ that name before, and she pleaded with the woman to tell her more about him.

Now, aboard any other ship, it might have been another Midas story. But Golden-Palms and Silver-Tongue were well pleased with the girl's willingness to learn, taking her on as a sort of apprentice. The rest grumbled for a bit, but between one prize and another, they were too busy to object too much.

The pair did notice that the girl moved and held her head strangely and would not even dream of climbing the rigging no matter the entreaties or teasing, but it was only to be expected. The Captain’s palms never lost their lustrous coat, and at night, Silver-Tongue’s words floated out of her mouth like strands of moonlight upon the dark water. The more time the girl spent with them, the better they liked her, and the three of them became friends. Dazzled by her success, the girl felt more alive than ever before.

When the stars were gold, silver and bronze, Golden-Palms told her a story.

Once, there was a man with a heart of gold. He was adored by his wife and their shared lover, but a heart of gold always yearns for the whole world. It was wrenched from his chest and hidden away in the royal palace.

The girl gasped: that could have been _her_! ‘How terrible!’

His loved ones swore to get it back. A servant agreed to help and betrayed them, and they were thrown in prison, from which they escaped. At which point the various tellings differed. Those that interested the women the most, said that the heart of gold had been recovered and hidden away somewhere safe.

‘So that’s your big prize,’ the girl guessed. ‘But whatever are you going to do with it?’ She glanced at Silver-Tongue. High above, Bronze-Feet was swinging himself to and fro like a monkey. ‘If you keep it, you shall be as cruel as a queen can be, but if you share it, it won’t be yours.’

‘I’m not planning to share it with _everyone_ ,’ the Captain countered. ‘Just with my people.’

‘And we’ll still be the ones who have found it,’ added Silver-Tongue.

That was good enough for the girl. ‘When do we begin?’

By and by, she pieced it all together. They ventured deep into a rainforest, then dove down after a shipwreck, only to be met with empty promises everywhere. Somewhere along the way, the girl fell in love, and the two women loved her back - first as a curious new addition, then as a friend, and finally as the third of them. No, she did not tell them her secret - why would she? The world was full of bad people.

Before leaving off their search for a while, they stopped in a certain port. There were more stories than crews there already in those days. An old sailor from a corner table caught the girl’s eye.

A year before, she would not have dared to approach him, but she had grown much bolder since then. The world was full of bad people, yes, but she could deal with them now.

She bought him a drink, and he told her a story about a man with a heart of gold.

When the man’s wife and lover tried to recover the heart of gold, they discovered that nothing but a gilded imitation remained: when a heart of gold is taken by force, it melts like the morning mist, becoming a ray of the sun.

The old man’s head jerked up abruptly, and he stared at the girl in speechless wonder.

She touched her hand to her cheek, and it came away with a smear of pure gold. It took her a moment to realise that she was crying. She had never done that before, had not known how to do it.

‘ _Protect her_ ,’ the old man rasped out. ‘ _Protect her, or you will lose her_.’

Behind her, she felt the presence of her lovers. The seat in front of her was empty, as if she had been talking to a ghost.

‘Your heart of gold was lost a long time ago,’ she said to Golden-Palms quietly, before explaining why her tears were leaving such visible stains. ‘So I’ll have to be your prize instead, after all.’

‘Nonsense,’ the two women replied in unison. ‘ _Every_ part of you is pure gold, and you’ve long since made a prize of _our_ hearts’. Those same tears barely showed on the Captain’s palms.

‘But you are yet to tell us one last thing,’ said Silver-Tongue. ‘Your name.’

‘My name?’ She had never had any. ‘Ismad, I think.’ It was the funniest of the possible anagrams, she thought.

And so, the three of them smiled at one another and walked back to their ship arm in arm, plotting out their next treasure hunt.


End file.
